Left 4 Dead Survivors Arcade Begins Testing In Japan

12/11 UPDATE: This game is now available in Japan

This isn’t a surprise as news keeps trickling out about Taito’s vision of the popular Left 4 Dead game but location tests have begun for the game at 4 different arcade venues in Japan. With that we have the first reports of the game from Japanese news sources, along with some direct screen shots of the game. Also, this:

In case this has you scratching your head as to what a guy in a tux holding a golden frying pan has to do with the game, this is the game’s producer at Taito, Mr. Yamaji Akira Yukari. He was also involved with other FPS games that Taito has done for arcades, including Cyber Diver and Half-Life 2: Survivor. Both news sources on the location test interviews him about why he brought this new game to Japan (from the translation, to share the charm of FPS games to the market in a better way). He also explains why the choice in controls, saying that this scheme is much more intuitive than what they had developed for Half-Life 2 and Cyber Diver.

Anyways, here are pictures showing the interested crowds that have shown up for the test so far. Game Watch reports that there was an 80 minute wait time to play:

According to the reports, the SVP numbers seen are “Survivor Points” which indicate the number of seconds you have to play. You can collect more SVP during play by collecting certain items or get bonus SVP points when you first play by purchasing certain packages. There are some other changes along with some original voice acting to make it better fit the arcade-style play for the territory. If I understand the article translation correctly, once time is up there is a “mega zombie rush” against the players, which means you do not want to waste time to get to the safe house.